Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when his Department plans to launch its review of outpatient services; and if his Department will include in that review services for (a) rheumatoid arthritis, (b) inflammatory bowel disease, (c) psoriasis and (d) other immune-mediated inflammatory conditions.
The Long Term Plan identifies the need to “redesign services so that over the next five years, patients will be able to avoid up to a third of face-to-face outpatient visits, removing the need for up to 30 million outpatient visits a year”. The work on outpatients is aimed at improving the patient experience, simplifying the process and where appropriate, enabling digital alternatives to attending a clinic in person.
The implementation plan for delivering the Long Term Plan and this commitment is in the process of being developed and will build on:
- The work hospitals are already developing in new models of care such as in Tower Hamlets Chronic Kidney Disease e-Clinics;
- The elective care transformation programme’s extensive work reviewing different models of outpatients across various specialties and the work to review productivity, capacity and shift to digital; and
- Clinical improvement identified by the Getting It Right First Time programme.